Friday, December 23, 2011

I
just wanted to wish all of my readers, followers et al a Merry Christmas and
Happy New Year. I'm not certain that I'll be posting any further
diatribes over the Christmas break so I'll leave you with this rather
interesting "Not Christmas" news item. I just thought that it
would be a nice change to post something that wasn't quite so
"intense", unless of course, you happen to be the lady involved.

According
to this case report by Doctor Oliver Richard Waters that
I found on the BMJ website (formerly known as the British Medical Journal), it
seems that a 76 year old female presented with weight loss and diarrhoea. Other
than that, she was in good health. She underwent a sigmoidoscopy (a
rather fun procedure if you haven't had one!) and the physician noted that she
had severe diverticulosis or small bulges in the inner lining of her large
intestine. A CT scan of her abdomen showed a linear foreign body located
in her stomach as shown here:

After
questioning her further, the patient recalled that, 25 years earlier, while she was inspecting a
spot on her tonsil with a pen, she slipped, fell and swallowed the pen. Her
husband, a general practitioner, dismissed her story because x-rays done at the
time showed up nothing. Her 21st century physician performed a
gastroscopy (another one of those fun medical procedures!) and extracted a
plastic felt-tip pen. The pen was subsequently removed and, surprisingly,
still worked as shown here:

Notice
that the first words that the pen "spoke" after seeing the light of
day for the first time in 25 years was a much relieved "hello"?

Here
is the summary of the case report:

"This
case highlights that plain abdominal x-rays may not identify ingested plastic
objects and occasionally it may be worth believing the patient’s account
however unlikely it may be."

Once again, have a Merry Christmas and please keep all of those plastic pens
away from your tonsils!

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About Me

I have been an avid follower of the world's political and economic scene since the great gold rush of 1979 - 1980 when it seemed that the world's economic system was on the verge of collapse. I am most concerned about the mounting level of government debt and the lack of political will to solve the problem. Actions need to be taken sooner rather than later when demographic issues will make solutions far more difficult. As a geoscientist, I am also concerned about the world's energy future; as we reach peak cheap oil, we need to find viable long-term solutions to what will ultimately become a supply-demand imbalance.